The Hobby of Model Railroading
Dean FreytagDescription
Dean Freytag has won regional and national contests for his modeling work. Dean is very proud of his awards and has been rightfully recognized for all the effort and time put into the model railroad hobby. After retirement, he became national contest chairman for the National Model Railroading Association. He stayed involved in the hobby as much as he could throughout his life. Dean will always be remembered as a great model railroader and an expert of the hobby.
The Hobby of Model Railroading
In part six of the 8-part South Ridge Line series, Allen Keller and Dean Freytag discuss the model railroading hobby. Allen asks Dean several questions about model railroading. You’ll gain insight into what Dean believes the model railroading hobby has offered him in his life.
One of Dean’s favorite parts of model railroading is the community support. He says he was able to surround himself with great people by being apart of the model railroading hobby. He also felt great about himself when others from the community would ask him for help.
Two more segments remain of the 8-part South Ridge Line series. The final two are demonstrations by Dean himself on steel mills and building cars. You don’t want to miss out!
Dean, many of your models have won regional and national contests. Since they require so much effort, do you find that you have less interest in other kinds of structures? No, I like to build structures and I like to build big structures, and that's the one, of course, nice thing about steel mills, that they're big and they're high. I'll say, what do you get out of the hobby? Well, you know I could say that I want to serve my fellow man or my fellow hobbyist, and I guess I do. I've gotten so much out of the hobby and maybe I've gotten a lot out of the hobby because I have given a lot to the hobby, of myself and my time and everything. I've been very fortunate. I've gotten all three of their major awards, their two Presidentials, Honorary Life Membership, Distinguished Service. And I'm very proud of those. National Model Railroad Association. Yes. I'm the national contest chairman. I've been able to surround myself with great people. You've been doing that. You've been contest chairman since Gordon Varney bought his first casting machine, I think. Well not quite, but pretty close. Yeah. But it's just been a lot of fun and I think it's the people. I'm retired, Allen, and I don't really miss the work, but I miss the people. It must be fun as Contest Chairman, seeing firsthand the latest developments in techniques, the sliding double hung windows and Z scale, for example, those kinds of things. What do you think about all these people who don't have layouts but are super, super modelers and well, rivet counter kind of guys? It's kind of putting you on the spot. What do you think about those kinds of guys? We need the rivet counters. We really do much as I, and I shouldn't say I hate to admit it, we need rivet counters. We need people to set goals. Do you think the national contest that the NMRA holds have advanced the state-of-the-art in the hobby or the state of design? I think we've helped an awful lot. Maybe not with a specific item, but they see the idea and then say, oh, well, I wonder if I did this and then the phone rings, Dean, could you help with this? Or could you help with that? And this makes you really feel great.
Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.
Already a member? Sign in
No Responses to “The Hobby of Model Railroading”